Comedy Actor John Candy Dies At 43

John Candy, who rose to fame in a series of slapstick films that made studio financiers smile and audiences shriek with delight, died on Friday while filming in Mexico.

The star of Uncle Buck; Planes, Trains & Automobiles; Stripes; and many other movies was 43 and was in Durango, 400 miles northwest of Mexico City.

Hector Partida, spokesman for the government of Durango state, said Candy was stricken apparently by a massive heart attack in his sleep and was found dead in his trailer when paramedics arrived.

The production of Wagons East was suspended. Candy, a 6-foot-3, 300-pound television and movie veteran who had won two Emmys, was playing the drunken wagon master of an 1860s prairie schooner heading the wrong way.

Besides battling a weight problem most of his life, Candy was reported to be a heavy smoker.

The manager of a condominium owned by Candy's mother in Sea Ranch Lakes said Candy bought the unit for his mother about three years ago. Security personnel at the condo said on Friday that residents who knew the mother were upset when they heard the news. They said Candy had been there only a few times.

At his death, Candy was diversifying his multitude of talents and most recently completed the Fox television movie comedy Hostage for a Day, his debut as a director.

Friends said he was trying to move beyond the knock-about, satiric style that had first endeared him to TV and then movie audiences.

In the movie Only the Lonely, he had assumed a more serious role as a Chicago police officer who falls in love and must choose between his girlfriend and maintaining the bonds with his mother.

"I think I have the ability, and I'd like to exercise that and stretch, if you will, to take other roles on," Candy said in 1991.

The shy, genial actor and writer, who was known for his spontaneous wit and as a teller of tales, avoided interviews until a few years ago. One reason, he said, was that he was still self-conscious despite his fame.

"I was a real heavy kid," he said in 1991. "I didn't go out on a lot of dates; Saturday nights I stayed home and watched Carol Burnett with my parents."

John Franklin Candy was born in Toronto. His father died a few years after his birth on Oct. 31, 1950, and he was raised by his mother, his aunt and grandparents. He attended Roman Catholic schools and competed in football and hockey but admitted to not being particularly skillful at either sport.

In 1971, he met another struggling Canadian actor, Dan Aykroyd, who was sorting mail for the Canadian Postal Service. At Aykroyd's urging, he auditioned for the Chicago Second City troupe, where the future stars of Saturday Night Live were hanging out.

With John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Bill Murray and Aykroyd, he established the ties that would lead to Second City in Toronto, where their half-hour skits were soon picked up in syndication by NBC as SCTV Network and sent to 45 U.S. cities.

The network expanded the program to 90 minutes in 1981, calling it SCTV Network 90, and put it on the air on Friday nights after The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson.

Candy both acted and wrote for SCTV, winning writing Emmys in 1981 and again in 1982. The show was a biting lampoon of everything on commercial TV, including such icons as Perry Como.

But the late-hour time slot crippled ratings, and SCTV was forced off the air in 1983.

Candy said the show accomplished one thing: "We increased the sale of VCRs" because "nobody stayed up."

Discouraged, he left TV, but not acting.

Film director Steven Spielberg had seen Candy earlier and gave him a small part in 1941, a comedy about the days after Pearl Harbor. Much of what he and Aykroyd did in the film was eliminated in a final cut, but he still considered it his first major film break.